David Bozell: ‘Jeff Flake Is an Absolute Con Artist, a Thief, a Liar’

David Bozell, president of ForAmerica, told SiriusXM host Raheem Kassam on Wednesday’s Breitbart News Daily that it was a little “disappointing” and “bittersweet” to see Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) drop his re-election bid because he “really, really wanted to be a part of defeating that guy.”

“I wanted to go to raise money to try to defeat him. I wanted to take our social media engine at ForAmerica and do everything possible to just whip his tail,” he said.

“Jeff Flake is an absolute con artist, a thief, a liar. I have no sympathy for him. I think that entire charade yesterday was pathetic,” said Bozell, referring to Flake’s retirement announcement from the Senate floor on Tuesday.

“For everyone who sits there and says, ‘That speech is going to be remembered for the ages!’ – that speech is going to be forgotten by Friday,” he scoffed.

“For every Jeff Flake, there’s like two or three other guys who think the same way in the Senate,” said Bozell.

“But the thing that really, really bothers me: you’ve got folks like Bernie Sanders, for example, who routinely accuse the Republican Party, specifically the president, of wanting to murder hundreds of thousands of people – whether it be through healthcare policy or climate change policy or pick whatever policy. They routinely throw out the line, ‘Republicans are killing people.’ And guys like Jeff Flake never, ever, ever stand up to a guy like Bernie Sanders, ever in their life, in their entire careers. They just let that charge just sit out there and germinate. The press picks it up, and guys like Jeff Flake never defend themselves, defend the president, defend their candidates against these laughable charges and go on offense,” he said.

“But the moment that the president drops 140 characters worth of ‘get your butts in gear and get me my tax cuts,’ oh, my gosh, civility has come to an end! Let’s go to the floor. Let’s quit. Where’s K Street? I need my dump truck full of cash. It’s really rather pathetic,” said Bozell.

“I watched Jeff Flake in 2013, folks. The movement was afoot to defund Obamacare, led by Mike Lee, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio as well,” he recalled. “And I watched Jeff Flake take that piece of paper pledging not to fund Obamacare any longer and just pass it down the table, without signing it. Every other good conservative senator that you know of signed that document, and that led to the fight in 2013. Jeff Flake, I watched him first-hand pass that down the table. He doesn’t have a spine. I’m glad he’s out of there.”

Bozell professed himself “a little bit split” on whether Flake should resign immediately or serve out the remainder of the six-year term to which he was elected.

“He absolutely promised many of the same things that Donald Trump promised,” he noted. “I love how he said yesterday, ‘I would have to run a campaign in that I would have to change my views on immigration.’ In other words, what he’s really saying – this is one the tales that he likes to spin – what he’s really saying is, ‘I’d like to go to Arizona and tell you I’m against illegal immigration, but when I get back here, I’ll do everything I can to stuff it down everyone’s throat.’ That’s what he’s really saying.”

“He can’t do that any more because of tools like social media, folks like Breitbart, everybody in on the plan to defeat Jeff Flake,” he said. “Guys like Jeff Flake cannot hide their positions any longer.”

“Would I like to see him resign? Yeah, because, to your point, he will not be a solution provider in the next 18 months,” Bozell told Kassam, who raised the ante by predicting Flake would become “a more stark impediment alongside his friends McCain, Murkowski, Corker.”

“He will be a bigger impediment than the entire Democratic Party apparatus,” said Kassam.

“These guys, Corker and Flake and company, they’re now self-identifying as the problem creators, the problem children instead of providing solutions,” Bozell agreed. “I love Corker, for example. Corker says, ‘I’m not going to vote on any tax cut deal that adds to the deficit.’ He told anybody that would listen to him. And now, all of a sudden, he’s saying, ‘No, wait a minute. Don’t criticize me for not being cooperative on tax cuts. I never said I didn’t want to do anything on tax cuts. I think I’m on board. I’ve just got to see the bill.’ He’s just creating problems. He’s not actively trying to find a solution within his caucus.”

“In large part, this is because of the way Mitch McConnell likes to run things, where these bills just sort of sit behind closed doors and are written in his office, so members cannot work with one another,” he observed.

“McConnell has done an exquisite job of bringing the Washington press corps into his apparatus, where his ess doesn’t stink,” Bozell elaborated, using a sanitized radio-friendly version of a popular vulgar expression for extreme arrogance to explain why the media are more likely to blame President Trump for legislative quagmires than the Senate majority leader.

As an example, he cited McConnell’s confidently assuring the press, public, and White House that congressional Republican leadership could manage Obamacare repeal.

“On and on and on it dragged, and eventually, they failed. The first criticism from the Republican establishment, led by Mitch McConnell, was, ‘We didn’t hear from the president. We didn’t know what he wanted. We didn’t get any leadership from the White House,’ which was the exact request the Senate had made,” he observed, calling it an example of McConnell’s “stab-you-in-the-back mentality.”